


What's Past is Prologue

by CharacteristicallyMinor



Category: The Bridge (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesia, Backstory, Gen, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 12:18:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13458108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharacteristicallyMinor/pseuds/CharacteristicallyMinor
Summary: Roger's first memory is of driving off the Bridge. Before that, there's nothing.





	1. Chapter 1

On the Bridge, there was an unspoken agreement not to ask others about their pasts. If you wanted to volunteer personal information, that was fine, of course. But in general, people chose to leave everything behind to go work on the Bridge for a reason, and it was common courtesy to not force people to talk about their history.

The crew of Watchtower 10 were no exception. They all had their own reasons for not talking about their pasts. Still, the past came up in conversation, in roundabout ways. Asking someone if they had siblings was just asking for trouble, but talking about middle school crushes or favorite TV shows was generally considered safe. 

That day, they’d somehow gotten on the topic of their first memories. They’d gone through Etta seeing fireworks, Bertie’s preschool class hamster dying, and Kate moving before the others looked expectantly at Roger. 

He knew that he could say nothing, and the others wouldn’t push. He rarely contributed when the conversation turned to their pasts, no matter how mundane the questions were, and the others accepted that. But he knew that they were making assumptions, and that the assumptions were wrong. His refusal to talk wasn’t because of a horrible childhood or because he didn’t like the team enough to share personal information. He wanted to, he really did. It just usually wasn’t possible.

And so this time Roger told the truth, more or less. “I was in a car. We were on a long road trip, and I’d fallen asleep. We weren’t there yet, so I went back to sleep.”

The conversation moved on, after that. But Roger kept thinking back to it over the rest of the day.

* * *

In the beginning, there was a woman and a car. Roger woke up, disoriented. The woman driving the car smiled and told him to go back to sleep. He moved his head to slump more comfortably and did as she told him.

It was just as he’d told the others. But there was one detail that he’d left out. When this memory occurred, Roger had been in his thirties.


	2. Chapter 2

He woke up in an unfamiliar room. He was alone.

He tried to remember where he was, or how he’d gotten there, but he came up with nothing. When he tried to think about to what he’d been doing yesterday, there was still nothing. The same was true of the past week, and even the past year. He desperately searched his memory for anything, but there was nothing. There was a faint memory of a woman and a car, but that was his only memory.

He didn’t even know his own name.

That final thought moved him to get out of bed and search the room for clues to his identity. There was a suitcase on the table, which seemed promising.

The first thing he saw when he opened the suitcase was a manila folder. Opening it up, he found a driver’s license, passport, and several loose pieces of paper.

He looked at the driver’s license first. Roger Kaplan. It didn’t feel familiar or unfamiliar; it was just a name. The face wasn’t any more or less familiar. Reaching up, he tried to decide if his hair seemed to match the hair in the photo. Then he realized that there would be a mirror in the bathroom.

He brought the driver’s license into the bathroom with him, but it wasn’t necessary to scrutinize whether it matched his face. At first glance, it was obvious that he was the man from the driver’s license. Which meant that he was Roger Kaplan. He now knew his name, birthday, and address. He didn’t know what year it was, which meant he still wasn’t sure how old he was, but he looked like he was roughly in his thirties.

Roger examined the driver’s license for any other hints as to who he was, but the only other thing he noted was that he was an organ donor. He chose to take that as a small sign that he was probably a decent person, although he was pretty sure that almost everyone signed up to be an organ donor. It was hardly enough information to construct an identity off of.

He went back to the folder, setting the passport aside and looking at the loose papers. The first one was titled medical history. It was a neat list of past and current prescriptions, allergies, surgeries, and family medical history. From that paper, Roger learned that he had a sister. He knew she had diabetes, but he didn’t even know her name.

Roger made a mental note to figure out what day of the week it was, since he apparently had to give himself a shot on Sundays, before moving on to the next paper.

It was a list of passwords. Laptop, e-mail, bank account, and so on. There were about twenty-five total. He skimmed down the list, but nothing jumped out. He was definitely going to look at his e-mail as soon as possible, but the other websites were fairly mundane.

The next paper was more informative. It was a resume. His past few jobs had all been located on something called the Transcontinental Bridge, in various positions. The most recent listed him as being a supervisor for Watchtower 2. 

There was a post-it note stuck to the bottom of the last paper, and he read it before reading the paper itself. The note said, “If you’re reading this, you have amnesia. Stay far off the Bridge and get a farm or something. Don’t try to contact your relatives—you haven’t spoken to any of them in years. Good luck. –Roger.”

Which meant that he’d known that this might happen. That was definitely interesting, since it probably meant he hadn’t just been in an accident. 

The last paper itself was a story about a casino at which one could make a wager where the prize was immortality and the stakes were amnesia. It seemed like a story, not something that could actually happen. But here he was, an amnesiac who’d previously spent time on the Bridge and who’d apparently prepared for the possibility of amnesia. If there was a more obvious explanation, it wasn’t coming to mind. His medical history didn’t include any brain trauma or family history of dementia. 

He felt fine, but he checked his head in the mirror anyways. No bumps or other indications that he’d recently had a head injury.

It occurred to him to call the front desk to see if they could tell him anything helpful.

“Hello?”

“Hi. I was, uh, wondering if you could tell me what name this room’s under?” He realized how odd that sounded and added, “I’m not sure if it’s under my friend’s name or mine, since I was pretty tired when we got here.”

“Sure thing. Looks like this room’s reserved under the name ‘Roger Kaplan.’”

“Great, thanks. Uh, also—where exactly is this hotel located? Sorry, we’re in the middle of a long road trip and I can’t remember where we were when we decided to stop for the night.”

“That’s perfectly understandable. We’re in Boston. More specifically, we’re located only a few blocks away from the start of the Transcontinental Bridge.”

“That’s very helpful, thank you.”

“Have a nice day!”

He’d hoped to learn the name of the woman who’d driven him here, but at least he knew where he was. The hotel’s closeness to the Bridge did make it sound like his amnesia could have been triggered by leaving the Bridge, like the story said. By the story’s logic, that would mean that he’d won the wager, since if he’d lost he’d have woken up with amnesia in a casino on the Bridge. But that would mean that he was immortal, and that was crazy. That part of the story must have been a metaphor for something. There was no way he was actually immortal.


	3. Chapter 3

Roger stayed in the hotel for a few days, after checking his bank account and deciding that he could probably afford it. If the woman came looking for him, this was where she’d look. As each hour passed, he knew the chances of her returning were increasingly low, but he couldn’t help but hope. She was the only one who might know something about his amnesia and his past.

He didn’t waste the time in the hotel, though. His laptop had been in his suitcase, and so he spent the days doing research. First, he pulled up his bank account to determine that he was going to be able to afford the hotel. Using the password and username from the list, he logged in and determined that he could afford to stay in the hotel for a few days. He wasn’t sure what his expenses were going to be in the near future, especially since he didn’t currently have a job, but it was worth the expense to ensure that he didn’t miss the woman if she came by. Besides, as far as he could tell he was currently homeless, so there wasn’t anywhere for him to go.

His next step was to check his e-mail. It was a personal e-mail; if he’d had a work e-mail before, it wasn’t on the list. He had an e-mail from the Bridge HR containing his termination paperwork, which included the date of his last day and an explanation of what would happen with his insurance. He checked the date on the computer and determined that his last day was yesterday. So he’d quit or been fired, then gotten in the car with a woman and a couple of suitcases and driven off the Bridge, knowing that it would cause him to lose all of his memories. 

The timing made the amnesia seem more intentional. Maybe he’d been fired and realized he had to leave the Bridge now that he didn’t have a job on it, even knowing the consequences of leaving? It was a tempting idea; it would give him someone to blame that wasn’t himself.

But Roger thought it was more likely that he’d quit. That he’d been unhappy with his life on the Bridge, and he’d decided that losing his memories in exchange for leaving it would be a fair trade. 

Roger didn’t know himself well enough to know if that was something he would do. At the moment, though, he would give anything to get his memories back, so if he’d chosen to make that trade Roger thought he’d chosen poorly.

He went through the rest of his e-mails, but they were all very bland. Either Roger had rarely received personal e-mails, or he wasn’t sentimental about them. The only e-mails he had saved were receipts and other financial information.

His deleted mail folder was empty. That seemed odd. He knew that the most obvious explanation was that it had just been automatically emptied by the e-mail program. But it was also possible that someone hadn’t wanted him to see his deleted e-mails. Maybe his past self was hiding something, or maybe somebody else had deleted them. Roger knew he was grasping at straws, seeing conspiracies where none existed. But he couldn’t help but wonder nonetheless.

He went through the rest of his accounts, but there was nothing interesting. After that, he started googling himself. 

Roger wished he’d done it sooner. There was a news article about an accident that had occurred a few days ago at Watchtower 2. Many of the crew members had died; the only survivors were Roger Kaplan and Elizabeth Hansen. Googling Elizabeth Hansen didn’t bring up much, but he was able to find a picture. Sure enough, it was the woman he remembered from the car.

Which meant… Roger didn’t know what it meant. People had died, and he’d stopped working for the Bridge and gotten amnesia directly after. It was definitely all related, but he couldn’t figure out how. He’d been responsible for the accident, he’d been fired, and he’d decided there was nothing left for him on the Bridge. Or he’d lost someone close to him, he’d quit his job, and he’d decided amnesia would be easier than dealing with the grief. Or something else. The pieces were all there, but there were so many ways they could be put together.

Roger googled the names of the people who had died in the Watchtower, but he didn’t find anything that seemed related. He definitely hadn’t been married to any of them, but that was about all he knew.

Eventually, he decided there was no more information to be found about his former coworkers. He went back to googling himself.

Aside from the article, there wasn’t anything else to find. Roger wondered whether the lack of results was partly due to the fact that he’d changed his name at some point, but decided that it probably wasn’t. If he’d changed his name around the same time he’d gone on hormones, or even around the same time he’d had surgery, then it had been years ago. Plenty of time for google results to accumulate if they were going to. 

He researched the Bridge after that. It was pretty much what the name suggested: a bridge connecting multiple continents. He learned a bit about the history of the Bridge and what, specifically, the Watchtowers were for.

After that, he got started on the practicalities: finding a job, getting a car, and getting an apartment.

A few days later, he’d managed to find a car in Boston and an apartment in Maine. He’d scheduled several job interviews for later that week, also in Maine. It was time to leave the hotel. 

It had been obvious for days that Elizabeth wasn’t going to come back for him, but it was still hard to leave. After this, if she did come looking he wouldn’t be where she’d left him.

Roger knew that was a pointless thing to worry about. She could always e-mail him if she wanted to get in touch with him. But it still felt like he was letting go of something.

He left the hotel anyways.


	4. Chapter 4

Roger was doing his best to make a new life for himself. He hadn’t followed his past self’s instructions verbatim—he was working for a shipping company in Maine, not on a farm in the Midwest—but he was following the spirit of the instructions. He was staying away from the Bridge, and he was trying to fulfill his past self’s wishes for a normal life.

And it was going okay, really. He was good at his job. He’d learned a lot about his food preferences—he’d even tried every flavor of ice cream the shop had to offer. It turned out that he was a Pralines and Cream guy, hands down. It would have been more fun with someone to try them with but, well, that area of his life hadn’t exactly been going great.

Roger was trying to make friends. Really. It was just hard. Most people his age already had plenty of friends and weren’t in the market for more. And it didn’t help that Roger remembered exactly nothing about his past, so he always sounded standoffish when people asked personal questions that he couldn’t answer. 

Still, he’d made a few attempts. He’d gone to a trans group a few times, but he couldn’t help but feel like he didn’t deserve to be there. His amnesia meant that he didn’t remember a time before he passed; he’d spent his whole life on hormones and post-top surgery. In this regard, he was very privileged. He was still trans, but he didn’t have much common ground with the others because he couldn’t remember going through the things that they talked about. 

He’d also gone out for a beer with a few coworkers a couple of times. It had been fine, but there still hadn’t been much common ground. They all were older than him and had families. Besides, having common ground with anyone was pretty much impossible with amnesia. They kept asking him about his dating life, too, and that was a whole other can of worms.

Roger had assumed that figuring out his sexuality would be pretty easy. It wasn’t. Sometimes people were hot. Having a romantic partner and being less alone would be nice, but he wasn’t sure that any romance-specific things were what appealed to him about being in a relationship. He hadn’t had a crush on anyone so far, and the idea of trying to go out on dates sounded pretty horrible. Dating could wait until he at least had friends. If that ever happened.

Maybe Roger just wasn’t the type of person who had friends. After all, nobody had e-mailed him, or otherwise tried to contact him. If he’d had friends before, they were completely fine with him being out of their lives. Or they were dead, if they’d worked at Watchtower 2 with him.

The thought of having dead friends probably shouldn’t have been as comforting as it was, but the idea that losing people at Watchtower 2 had triggered his decision to get amnesia was the most comforting explanation. It was better to think he’d thrown his life away out of grief than out of general misery or because he hadn’t had any other choice.

Roger had an e-mail from a Bridge headhunter suggesting that there were several positions on the Bridge that he would be well suited for if he was ready to come back. He’d politely declined, not bothering to explain all the reasons that was a bad idea, but it did seem like evidence that he hadn’t been fired, so that was something. He asked if the headhunter could put him in touch with Elizabeth, but they said that she had also stopped working for the Bridge, and that she hadn’t left any contact information.

So he hadn’t settled into the swing of things yet. He was only a couple months old. Things would get better, he just had to give it time. There was no way he was going to ever end up back on the Bridge, at least.


	5. Chapter 5

“Hey, you worked on the Bridge, right?” 

“For a while, yeah. Why?” Roger asked. He hadn’t talked much about his old job with his coworkers, but they knew enough about what he’d done before. They knew as much as Roger did, honestly.

“Did you hear that they’re going to reopen Aqualand?”

“Seriously? That place was a deathtrap.”

“The whole Bridge is, if you ask me. You wouldn’t catch me dead out there.”

“It was safer before. Things have really started going downhill lately. There’s a reason I got out when I did,” Roger said. It was true that the Bridge wasn’t doing well nowadays. The accident at Watchtower 2 hadn’t been an isolated incident. More and more locations had been closing, often after accidents that resulted in deaths. 

He’d been doing his best to not be too invested in news about the Bridge. He wasn’t going back, and clinging too much to that part of his past was exactly what his past self had warned him against. He checked for news every Sunday, and that was it.

He was itching to find out about Aqualand, but he waited out the rest of the week until looking it up. 

The article he found was pretty bland. Lots of PR talk about how Aqualand was fun for the whole family and a treasured road trip tradition, and very little substance. It was about what he’d expected. The picture accompanying the article, though—that was another story.

The actual subject of the picture was a team of engineers and a roller coaster. That wasn’t what drew Roger’s attention. Behind the group of engineers, there was a woman. She was walking purposefully toward something, seemingly unaware that there was a photo being taken. It was Elizabeth. 

This was his chance to talk to her. To finally find out why he’d been willing to lose his memories, and what exactly had happened at Watchtower 2. She’d been the only other survivor, and the one who’d driven him off the Bridge.

Roger found the number he’d been given for the Bridge HR. He’d been told to call it if he changed his mind about coming to work on the Bridge, but he figured it was as good a starting point as any. 

“Hi, this is Roger Kaplan. I used to work at Watchtower 2,” Roger said when the call connected.

“Hi Roger! Of course I remember who you are, silly! It hasn’t been that long. So, have you decided to come back?” she asked.

“Uh, no. I actually had a question about one of my old coworkers, Elizabeth? We fell out of touch after what happened with Watchtower 2, and I thought you might have her contact information?”

“Sorry, Roger. We haven’t heard from her since the accident at Watchtower 2, and we have no way of contacting her.”

“I thought she was working on the Bridge again? With the new Aqualand renovations?”

“Really? Who’d you hear that from? No, she’s not. With the way we left things, I wouldn’t imagine that… well, never mind that. Are you sure you aren’t interested in coming back?”

Roger quickly thought about his next option. If Elizabeth wasn’t an employee, then he couldn’t get in touch with her that way. But he knew where she was. There had to be something he could do with that information.

“No thanks. One more thing- could you put me in touch with someone who’s currently working at Aqualand?”

“Sure! I’ll give you Srini’s number- he’s great, he’ll be able to tell you anything you want to know about the renovations.” Roger had an inkling that Srini was going to try to recruit him to work at Aqualand, but that was fine. He could handle a little recruiting if it got him the answers he needed.

It turned out, however, that Srini hadn’t seen Elizabeth. He was very confident that the only people who had been at Aqualand were employees and reporters, as it wasn’t open to the public yet. 

There had to be someone who’d seen her. Some clue she’d left. If Roger could only just go there, he was sure he’d be able to figure out where she’d went.

But Roger couldn’t leave. If he went on the Bridge and then left the Bridge again, he’d lose all his memories. He’d already made that sacrifice once; doing it again would be absurd.

But, well, it was different this time. He only had four months worth of memories now, and honestly, they hadn’t been a great four months. He liked his job at the shipping company and he’d made a few work friends, but there was nobody who’d really miss him if he left. And finding a similar job wouldn’t be that hard. He’d learned a bit more about who he was as a person, but he could just leave better notes this time and it wouldn’t be hard to reconstruct his progress.

Roger wondered if this was what he’d done before. If he’d looked at his life and decided there wasn’t much worth saving, that losing everything was an acceptable cost.

It was different this time, though. Losing a few months was completely different from losing a few decades. This time, it was going to be worth it.

Before Roger could second-guess himself, he’d packed up and hit the road.


	6. Chapter 6

“Excuse me. Have you seen this woman?” 

There were a few things Roger had figured out about his personality early on. One of them was that he wasn’t an optimist. He had a lot of perseverance, but not a lot of genuine belief that good things were going to happen. He wasn’t sure if he was a realist or a cynic, but he definitely didn’t get his hopes up for things that weren’t likely to happen.

All that being said, Roger had been way too optimistic about his chances of finding Elizabeth. Whatever the hell she’d been doing at Aqualand, she’d apparently managed to do it without ever talking to another person.

The first part of Roger’s plan had worked out. Srini had been more than happy to let Roger look around Aqualand and see the renovations in progress. He’d even agreed to let Roger spend a couple of days there, taking in the renovations and talking to the crew. It was pretty obvious that he was doing it in the hopes that Roger would cave and decide to come back to work on the Bridge, but Roger was fine with that. 

It was everything after that that was the problem. There wasn’t any physical evidence that she’d been there, and nobody remembered seeing her.

Roger kept asking. Just in case.

“I don’t think so. You’re better with faces than I am, Bertie. Do you remember seeing her?”

“Sorry, I don’t. Is that your wife?”

“What? No. It’s an old coworker, who went missing,” Roger replied, taken aback.

“Forgive him, we just got engaged and he’s got love on the mind. Well, we both do, really.”

“Congratulations,” Roger said absentmindedly, already thinking who he’d ask next.

“I hope you find your coworker!”

He got through talking to the engineers and started talking to the seasonal employees. They were mostly college students, working over their summer break on the Bridge. Some of them might have been interns, but Roger didn’t care that much about the finer distinctions of Bridge hiring.

“I haven’t seen her, sorry. Did she disappear?”

“Yes, a few months ago.”

“You know, that’s more common than you’d think, out here. I’ve heard a lot of stories about people disappearing- wandering off at Aqualand and never returning, that kind of thing.”

“Right, yeah. I don’t think this is that kind of disappearance. It’s more of a ‘forgot to leave her new contact information’ disappearance than a ‘vanished in the middle of the night’ type of thing. She’s unreliable, but that doesn’t mean it’s a repeat of the Transcontinental Hotel.” That was one of the few pieces of trivia Roger had managed to gather about the Bridge. 

The girl Roger was talking to looked a little strained at the mention of the Transcontinental Hotel. Odd, but not really interesting. She didn’t know where Elizabeth was, and he moved on to the next person.

Roger went through more and more conversations, until finally he was sure he’d asked everyone in the whole park about Elizabeth. None of them had seen her. Roger’s trip had yielded no new information.

Roger went back to his hotel room that night. He was going to have to go back to the mainland the next day, but first he had to update the amnesia folder, since he was going to need it once he left the Bridge.

He tried to figure out what he’d learned over the past four months, but it was hard turning months’ worth of experiences into a few bullet points. It was weird to think that he was just going to be erased again, as soon as he got back to mainland. It was kind of awful, actually. The past four months hadn’t been perfect, but they’d shaped who he was, and he hated the idea of going through that early uncertainty again. He’d finally gotten to a point where he was rebuilding his store of memories and settling into a groove, and the idea of erasing it was extremely unpleasant.

If losing four months’ worth of memories was such a huge sacrifice, he couldn’t even imagine choosing to lose decades’ worth. Even if his past self had been grieving or guilty, Roger couldn’t imagine making that choice. He couldn’t imagine making a lot of the choices his past self had made; he still had no idea why he’d even accepted the wager in the first place, knowing the stakes. He’d won, but Roger didn’t feel much like a winner.

He’d made a terrible mistake, coming back on the Bridge. Now that he was on it, he knew he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t do that to himself again.

He called the Bridge HR woman back. He still didn’t know her name, but he’d missed his opportunity to ask what it was.

“Hi, this is Roger Kaplan. I wanted to talk to you about coming back to work on the Bridge.”

“That’s wonderful! We’d be happy to have you back. Did you want to come back as a Watchtower supervisor, or were you interested in another position? I know you’ve been interested in Aqualand lately- now all of our managerial roles there are filled, but I’m sure we could work something out if you’re dead set on working at Aqualand.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Um, before we figure out what position I’d be in, there’s something we need to discuss. I, well, I’m suffering from some memory loss. It won’t impair my ability to do my job, but I will need to do any job training again.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said. Her tone of voice was a bit happier than her words would suggest. Like she didn’t consider his memory loss to be a bad thing. But that was paranoid. She was a very cheery woman, and that probably just showed even when she was being politely concerned for someone. “Don’t worry, we at the Bridge take care of our employees. Your memory loss won’t affect your ability to get a job with us, although we’re going to start you off as a regular employee rather than a supervisor.”

“Sounds good,” Roger replied. “When can I start?”

“I love that eagerness! Why don’t you report to Watchtower 5 on Sunday at five pm? Your first shift will be Monday morning, but that’ll give you the evening to get settled in.”

“I can do that. Oh, uh, would it be possible to keep the amnesia thing quiet? I’m fine with my supervisors knowing, if that’s necessary, but I’d rather not have all my coworkers know.”

“Of course! Don’t worry about that, we’re very good about discretion. We don’t give out our employees’ personal information, and it’s entirely up to them whether or not they wish to disclose it themselves.”

They exchanged pleasantries and ended the call. Just like that, Roger was a Bridge employee again.


	7. Chapter 7

Roger quickly settled into the rhythm of working on the Bridge. It didn’t feel familiar, per se, but he felt like he was picking up the various tasks faster than average. He liked that. He’d already learned at the shipping company that he was the type of person who enjoyed being good at his job.

It was nice to be surrounded by people who also didn’t talk about their background much. He didn’t feel like the odd one out, the only one unable to talk about their friends or family or childhood. People with happy, well-adjusted backgrounds generally didn’t choose to work in the middle of the ocean, hours away from everyone from their past.

That wasn’t to say that he had a roaring social life. It was clear that everyone was merely coworkers and not friends. People didn’t come to the Bridge to make friends; that much was clear. The ones who did form connections… well, it didn’t always end well. A year after regaining his job on the Bridge, one of his coworkers used another as bait for a monster. If he’d ever had any romantic notions about solidarity between Bridge employees, that would have gotten rid of them pretty quickly.

Roger kept waiting for one of his coworkers to recognize him, but nobody ever said anything. Staff rotations happened often enough that at some point he must have worked with someone who’d known him in the past, but if that was the case they were fine with Roger not recognizing them at all. Then again, staff rotation happened often enough that everyone started to blur together. Maybe they’d just attributed it to that.

Sooner than he’d expected, Roger became a supervisor again. This time, he was assigned to Watchtower 10. Unlike travel agents and normal crew members, supervisors rotated around the Watchtowers fairly infrequently. It didn’t make for a much more stable life, though, since the rest of the crew was still rotating. He was based out of the same building with the same monster, he supposed, but it wasn’t like he was going to build a long-lasting friendship with the creature.

Eventually, the rotations stopped. There was some bullshit announcement about the stability making people more productive, but that wasn’t the real reason why. They told the supervisors the truth—rotations had stopped because the Watchtowers were being attacked, and headquarters thought that staff rotation would be a liability.

The Bridge had never been completely safe, but Roger could tell that things were worse than they’d ever been. The incident with Watchtower 2 had been the start of it. If he could only remember what had happened there, he’d know how to stop it from happening again.

It hadn’t been an accident. He knew that much. But he couldn’t imagine getting attacked, then deciding to lose his memories rather than work to stop the attacks from happening to someone else.

If he lost his current crew… well, he was more attached than he was willing to admit. Almost definitely more attached than his past self had been, since that was back in the days of constant crew rotation. If he lost his crew now, he’d fight like hell to make sure it never happened to another Watchtower.

Roger had spent some time trying to figure out what would drive him to choose amnesia if he lost his crew now. Maybe after he’d gotten revenge and ensured it would never happen again, he’d want a clean slate. But that clearly hadn’t happened after Watchtower 2. The only thing he could come up with was guilt. 

If there was something he could have done to stop the attack or save a member of his crew, and he’d failed to do it? That just might be awful enough to live with that amnesia would be preferable. 

That must have been what happened with Watchtower 2. He couldn’t think of another explanation.

Well, that wasn’t completely true. It was possible that Elizabeth had driven him off the Bridge against his will, either because she was partially responsible for the attack or because she blamed him for failing to save the rest of their crew. Headquarters still suspected she might have been responsible in the events at Watchtower 2, since she hadn’t been seen since then. 

Roger didn’t know what to think about that. He’d spent years looking for her. He’d gotten close a few times, but he’d never actually succeeded in catching up to her. But that wasn’t a sign that she was guilty. For all he knew, she was actually trying to find the people who’d attacked Watchtower 2, and she was avoiding him because she partially blamed him for not stopping what had happened. That seemed more likely than her being some sort of inside agent who’d killed the others then kidnapped him.

Roger spent a lot of his time trying to figure out what had happened at Watchtower 2. If he knew that, he’d be able to stop it this time. He wasn’t going to lose his crew again.


	8. Chapter 8

“We need to talk,” Kate said. Her expression and voice were dangerously calm, in the way that Roger had learned to recognize as indicative of her being particularly furious. 

“I can tell that I’m not going to enjoy this conversation,” Roger replied. Shockingly, that didn’t make Kate any less angry. 

“After Percy and Nora attacked, you agreed to stop hiding things from us. You specifically said that you weren’t going to keep any information about the attacks from us, because not knowing things can get us killed,” Kate said.

“I haven’t broken that agreement. You know everything I know.”

“I found an old newspaper article that lists you as one of the two survivors of the attack on Watchtower 2. Right now, we know almost nothing about the attacks on the other Watchtowers. If you were there, we need any information you have. If we know who attacked you and what happened, we can make a plan to make sure we’re ready if they come for us,” Kate said. “Look, I’m sorry if it’s hard to talk about, but we need that information.”

Roger winced. He should have realized that eventually one of his crew would find the article. 

He considered his options. There was no alternative; he was going to have to tell Kate about his amnesia. The only question was whether to tell the others. Kate would keep it to herself if he asked, he was pretty sure. But maybe it was time to tell them.

“Let’s get the others. I’d rather only talk about this once.”

Sooner than Roger would have liked, Etta and Bertie joined them in the kitchen. They looked confused about why Roger had called them there; Kate evidently hadn’t told them what she’d discovered.

“There’s something I need to tell you. A few years ago, I was the supervisor at Watchtower 2. It was the first Watchtower to be attacked, and I was there,” Roger said. He looked away from the crew, not wanting to see their reactions to the next part. “I didn’t tell you this because, well, a few days later I woke up in a hotel room with amnesia. I don’t have any memories from before I left the Bridge. Which means I don’t actually remember the attack. I’ve tried to look into it, but I haven’t been able to find much.”

“Roger, I didn’t realize. I’m sorry I accused you of hiding information about the attack from us,” Kate said. “Did you get a head injury in the attack that caused the amnesia?”

“Nope. As far as I can tell, I made a bet. One of the conditions is that if I leave the Bridge, I lose all my memories,” Roger explained. He decided not to mention the immortality thing. He was pretty sure that had been successfully proven when he was stabbed-- hell, that might have been how he survived Watchtower 2—but it would only complicate the situation.

“Not to disparage your life choices, but it’s hard to imagine what could have been on offer that was worth wagering your memories,” Kate said. 

She wasn’t wrong. Roger had technically won his bet, and he still hadn’t figured out why he’d been so desperate to be immortal. Outliving everyone seemed pretty awful, and living forever seemed pretty pointless. He hadn’t spent much time trying to figure out what had made the bet seem like a good idea, since he’d been pretty fixated on why he’d chosen to give himself amnesia, but it still didn’t seem like a good decision.

Roger shrugged.

“That means you can’t leave the Bridge, or you’ll lose all your memories again, right?” Bertie asked.

“Yup,” Roger agreed.

“Then why on Earth would you come back on the Bridge?” Etta asked.

“I’ll admit, that wasn’t my finest moment. I was trying to find the other person who survived Watchtower 2. I remembered her driving me off the Bridge, but she was gone when I woke up. I saw her in the background of a news article about Aqualand a few months later, and so I went back to try and catch up to her. She was gone by the time I got there, though, but then I decided I didn’t want to lose all my memories again and, well, here I am.”

“So she kidnapped you so you’d get amnesia? It sounds like she’s almost definitely behind the attack on Watchtower 2,” Etta said.

“I don’t think so. I think I asked her to do it. I quit my job before leaving the Bridge, and there’s no reason to think that she knew beforehand that I’d get amnesia if I left the Bridge.”

The others didn’t seem convinced.

“I’m going to look into her anyways,” Kate said. “Regardless of her role in it, it sounds like she’s the only one who knows what happened at Watchtower 2.”

“Good luck finding her,” Roger said. “I’ve been looking for literally as long as I can remember, but I’m sure it’ll be a breeze.”

“We’ll see,” Kate said. “Anyways, thanks for telling us about this. Even though I kind of forced you to.”

“I should have known you’d find out eventually. And, well, I think it was time,” Roger said. “Anyways, show and tell’s over. Let’s get back to work.”

It was nice to be able to be open with his crew, Roger decided. He trusted them, and now they knew that. 

He still didn’t know as much as he would have liked about his past, but he probably never would. Maybe that was okay. At least now he had people who he could rely on. And if he lost all his memories again, he knew that he wouldn’t have to figure out who he was again alone. 

That was more than his past self had ever had.


End file.
